CBR: LBCC: Berkeley Breathed Panel

[CBR News]

Berkeley Breathed makes his first comic convention appearance ever in a rare and special presentation where the author/artist shared with the audience the source of his inspiration for ideas, and hinted at future projects.


Full article here.

[Gianluca]

Grew up reading and enjoying Bloom County. I picked up the hardcover and it's really good. Great job on the production, I can tell a lot of love went into putting this book together.

[Matt-M-McElroy]

Berkeley Breathed has no understanding of how comics on the web work and seems to think that most of them only 3000 readers per day.

From this interview:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15842.html

This is a sad topic but I’m going to be blunt. Newspapers have about five years left. Young readers of the newspaper comics simply don’t exist anymore in numbers that count. Those eyeballs are elsewhere and will not come back. Online comics are terrific. But they will never have 1% of the readership any major comic had 20 years ago, by the nature of the technology. They’re different beasts now. No, after having 70 million daily readers in 1985, getting 3000 a day online isn’t terribly energizing at this stage.

Seems a bit bitter and clueless about the technology to me.

-Matt

[Bevbos]

Berkeley Breathed has no understanding of how comics on the web work and seems to think that most of them only 3000 readers per day.

From this interview:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15842.html



Seems a bit bitter and clueless about the technology to me.

-Matt

I dunno... is there an online comic with millions of daily readers? Comic strips used to have a captive audience due to the importance of print newspapers. With those as an avenue gone, are online comics going to be able to have literally millions of readers, other than in theory?

[Robbo]

Great article, Mark. Breathed has been off my radar for a long time but I used to be a rabid Bloom County fan. I'll have to check out his new works. I'm especially looking forward to "Flawed Dogs"...

[Gianluca]

I dunno... is there an online comic with millions of daily readers? Comic strips used to have a captive audience due to the importance of print newspapers. With those as an avenue gone, are online comics going to be able to have literally millions of readers, other than in theory?

Definitely more a realist than bitter. Who still reads the Sunday Newspaper comics nowadays and who under 21 even reads a printed newspaper? Most people get their news online from a variety of sources. Same for webcomics. There are so many to choose from, they don't get near the same amount of readers as the newspaper comics used to get prior to the internet commercial explosion.

[Matt-M-McElroy]

I dunno... is there an online comic with millions of daily readers? Comic strips used to have a captive audience due to the importance of print newspapers. With those as an avenue gone, are online comics going to be able to have literally millions of readers, other than in theory?

How many of those "millions" of newspaper readers were reading the comics?

I know quite a few people even today that don't bother with the comics at all and are focused mainly on the headlines or sports pages only.

Anyway, successful online comics include Penny Arcade, PvP, XKCD, Something Positive, Ctl Alt Del and Order of the Stick just to name a few off the top of my head. All of them feature creators who create comics for a living, relying only on the income from their readers/fans supporting the comic.

-Matt

[Dan Felty]

I think it's great to see Breathed out and about. Hopefully he enjoyed this experience enough to take part in more as forthcoming volumes are released. I didn't realize this book was out yet; I'll have to pick it up!

Berkeley Breathed has no understanding of how comics on the web work and seems to think that most of them only 3000 readers per day.

From this interview:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15842.html



Seems a bit bitter and clueless about the technology to me.

-Matt

What's your point? This has nothing to do with this article.

[jacob_b]

His line was huge. I had no idea what Bloom County was, but my friend said it was a huge hit. Wish I got to talk with him now, especially since this was his first showing.

[Mistwell]

Got my copy yesterday. Great book. It has a comments section along the side with pithy notes or context from the year it was written that add a new dimension to the strip. Definitely worth it.